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OJAI, Calif. — The famous sunsets in Ojai — often capped by a phenomenon called “the pink moment,” when the light hits the Topatopa Mountains just so, bathing the Ojai Valley in shades of pink — weren’t the only reason that Phylies and Michio Kusama chose to resettle there. But they certainly didn’t hurt.
“You just stand there in awe and are absolutely impressed by the display of natural beauty up in the sky,” said Michio Kusama, 76, a psychologist and professor who is originally from Japan. “It’s really something to behold.”
He and his wife, 72, a retired schoolteacher and concert violinist, started thinking about moving to Ojai from their home in Northern California after their three daughters chose to settle near Los Angeles. They weren’t familiar with the small city, which is known as a popular wellness retreat laced with hiking paths, horse trails and day spas. But they had grown weary of the upkeep required in their three-bedroom, two-bath home in Castro Valley, an Oakland suburb, and they were eager to move closer to their eight grandchildren. So when their youngest daughter suggested they relocate to Ojai, about 80 miles northwest of downtown LA, they realized it might offer more than an opportunity to be closer to family. It was also a chance, in retirement, to better connect to the natural world.
“One thing I treasure a lot about being in Ojai is a general sense of slowness,” said Michio Kusama, noting that historic oak trees are preserved in Ojai (as they are in many California cities). “We’re so fortunate to live now with nature around us.”
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The Kusamas sold their Castro Valley home for $866,000 in August 2018 and stayed with their youngest daughter for a few months while looking at Ojai real estate. In November 2018, the couple closed on a two-bedroom, 1 1/2 bath, ranch-style house with a detached artist’s studio, paying $875,000. The backyard was an oasis of olive, citrus, cherry and peach trees, and the garden was blooming with okra, artichokes, tomatoes and kale.
They’ve tended it all with care, adding 20 varieties of roses to the yard. Phylies Kusama, an avid cook, also enjoys harvesting organic vegetables and cooking large meals for members of her extended family, who visit regularly.
“I don’t think we are the kind of people who could like living in a condominium or in a retirement home with no yard,” she said. “We love waking up in the morning, having breakfast and looking out into our garden.”
Ojai’s wide housing stock of homes with acres of open land, as well as its equestrian heritage, also lured Katherine and Dustin Good, both 35. The couple, high school sweethearts, grew up in Oak View, an unincorporated community just south of Ojai. After marrying, they stayed close, settling in a four-bedroom, three-bath Oak View home on a 7,000-square-foot lot with their two children, Makayla, now 16, and Kaden, now 13.
But all four family members are outdoor enthusiasts, and Makayla competes in high school rodeo. The family owns three horses and was tired of paying to board them. So they sold the house and in December 2019 paid $625,000 for a three-bedroom ranch-style house in Ojai on three-quarters of an acre — enough land to keep their animals on the property. The home also has a four-car garage that they are converting into a rental unit to help offset their mortgage. A hillside slope on the property has steps that lead to a valley overlook, and they’re planning to build a wide deck in that spot for watching sunrises and sunsets.
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“Ojai is still open and free,” said Katherine Good, who commutes an hour each morning to her job as a radiology technician in Santa Barbara. “I do feel the real estate prices are high, and we have worked very hard and pinched our pennies to live here. But the best part of growing up in Ojai was that I always had horses, and being able to do the same for our kids was the most important thing for both me and my husband.”
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What You’ll Find
Ojai, a 4.3-square-mile city with about 8,000 residents, sits in the Ojai Valley, a scenic recess in the Topatopa Mountains, about 15 miles from the Pacific coast. Its downtown village is walkable and quaint, with shops, restaurants and the Ojai Valley Museum, an exhibition hall inside a historic church, clustered along its main vein.
A citywide ban on chain stores, enacted in 2007, has helped locally run businesses, like the used bookstore Bart’s Books and the European-style deli Marché Gourmet, succeed. (Chains are permitted in the unincorporated communities surrounding the city).
Wellness tourism is a major draw in Ojai, and spa resorts like the Ojai Valley Inn are popular with celebrities, social media influencers and weekenders from LA. But just a five-minute drive from downtown Ojai, the neighborhoods open up, and areas including East End, Persimmon Hill and Saddle Mountain Estates offer bridle trails, valley views and ample land. Los Padres National Forest borders Ojai on the north.
Ojai’s housing stock is a diverse blend of architectural styles, with the majority of homes built between 1940 and 1980. The city is also home to nearly a dozen mobile home parks, many reserved for residents 55 and older. After rapid growth in the 1970s, Ojai passed slow-growth laws to rein in development; in 2019 its first new apartment complex in 10 years was built.
Water supply remains a major concern, with Ojai residents concerned about drought and frequent emergency shut-offs to Lake Casitas, the reservoir that supplies Ojai with its drinking water.
What You’ll Pay
“A lot of people are moving out of Ojai because they can no longer afford it,” said Dale Hanson, 80, an agent with Ojai Valley Real Estate, pointing at a trend over the past 15 years of Californians, many from LA and its suburbs, purchasing second homes in Ojai and driving up prices. “If you grow up here and then leave Ojai, you can’t afford to come back. And that’s a sad story.”
The market in Ojai dipped a bit last year, however, with 124 single-family homes sold in 2019 at a median price of $796,500, compared with 111 single-family homes sold in 2018 at a median price of $920,000. In 2017, 120 single-family homes sold at a median price of $760,000, according to data from Ojai Valley Real Estate and the Ojai Multiple Listing Service.
Rental costs have crept upward, with the average one-bedroom apartment going for at least $2,000 a month and most apartments with two or three bedrooms asking upward of $3,500.
The Vibe
Kelly Wiggins, 50, an agent with Ventura, California-based Joe Kapp Real Estate, has lived in Ojai for 15 years. A mother of six, she said that despite Ojai’s high prices and popularity among celebrities, it remains an ideal place to raise a family. “It’s very tight-knit and small,” she said, adding that whenever her children walked home from school instead of taking the bus, neighbors who spotted them would pick up the phone to make sure she knew.
Ojai’s quiet nature has long drawn people in search of ecological and spiritual enlightenment. First inhabited by Chumash Indians and popular with disciples of Jiddu Krishnamurti, the Indian Theosophist leader who made his home there, Ojai is a hotbed of meditation retreats, herbal medicine shops and vegan eateries. When the Thomas fire formed a ring of flames around Ojai in late 2017 but spared its city center, some locals credited Ojai’s purported seven energy vortexes for protecting them.
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“Was it a mystical, spiritual vortex that saved the heart of town from the fire, the belt of fruit trees that surround us or simply a shift in wind that spared most of us?” asked Laura Rearwin Ward, editor and publisher of the Ojai Valley News, in an editor’s note a year later.
But to Cindy Johnson Hanson, who moved north from Long Beach, California, to Ojai last November, the city seems perfectly down to earth. “People are very grounded here,” she said. “Nobody is overly dressed up. People come here to be natural and authentic.”
That authenticity has helped her tap into a midlife passion for horses. Since moving to Ojai, Hanson, who works remotely as an administrator for a business group, has begun taking riding lessons at the Upper Campus of the Ojai Valley School, a local private school. “Here I am, at age 58, and you start realizing, I have to figure what I love,” she said.
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Ojai hosts an annual music festival at Libbey Park, anchored by the 973-seat Libbey Bowl amphitheater, as well as an annual wine festival at Lake Casitas and a popular tennis tournament dating back to 1896.
The Schools
The Ojai Unified School District operates two high schools, one middle school and four elementary schools: Meiners Oaks, Mira Monte, San Antonio and Topa Topa. During the 2018-19 school year, 36% of third-graders in the Ojai Unified School District met or exceeded standards for English and language arts (ELA) on California’s Smarter Balanced Assessment test; 34% exceeded standards for math.
Middle schoolers attend Matilija Junior High, where during the 2018-19 school year, 44% of eighth-graders met standards for English and 39% met standards for math.
Most high schoolers attend Nordhoff High School, where during the 2017-18 school year, 92% of students who took the SAT exam met bench marks for English and 64% met bench marks for math. (For the SATs, the College Board defines students as “college ready” when their test scores meet a bench mark of 480 in English and 530 in math).
The Commute
Ojai is a 45-minute drive from Santa Barbara (an hour in traffic), and 90 minutes from LA (up to 2 1/2 hours in traffic).
Gold Coast Transit operates a bus service to Oxnard, Ventura and Port Hueneme; fares are $1.50 each way.
The Amtrak station in Ventura is a 25-minute drive away. Commuters can catch the Pacific Surfliner south to San Diego and north to San Luis Obispo. In East Ventura, they can catch the Metrolink to LA.
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The History
The Chumash Indians called the Ojai Valley “Awhai,” meaning moon, according to the Ojai Valley Museum. A millionaire by the name of Edward Libbey helped design and build the town center. Ojai was incorporated in 1921.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times .